Welsh food: a report from 2040

What does a Wales in 2040 that can feed itself look like?

I am glad to be able to present an extract from a 2042 history of agriculture in Wales:

“Two of the most striking aspects of the renewed food landscape of Wales are the re-emergence of the mixed farm and the specialization of different regions. Mixed farms, by the late 20^th century seen as an oddity, have once again become the norm, with a greater awareness of the benefits of resilient agricultural systems. Some of that thinking can even be seen on a national level, most evocatively in the sudden recommencement of transhumance in several parts of the country to the great bemusement of the English media as it tried to grapple with the sea-change that has taken place in Wales’ relationship with its landscapes, food and farming, and work out whether sheep jokes still worked for a country now winning renown for veg production and white wine.

Originally the by-product of a not-quite-sober bet made in a Pontarddulais pub on a warm afternoon, the first recorded instance of transhumance in the Swansea area for centuries took place in 2026. Dan Whitelaw, smallholder in the Aman valley (whose parents had moved from Bristol to a smallholding in Carmarthenshire when he was a child), had got into debate with an older farmer about the old practice of transhumance. To demonstrate his assertion that it could be done today, he walked his flock of Balwen sheep down the A483 through Ammanford, Pont and Gowerton to a friend’s farm on the edge of the Gower saltmarshes to growing crowds and cheers, several free pints and a police fine.

The sheep prospered however, and what had started as a bet and a bit of a joke suddenly became a pet project with a wide following. A deft social media campaign and several supportive articles in national media outlets buttered the way for an organized community transhumance in 2027, accompanied by a festival atmosphere both on the down-route in autumn and back up the following spring. Good weather on both occasions gave God’s blessing to the publicity campaign, and by the next year it felt as though the tradition had never ceased in the area, with sheep from a dozen farms making the migration up and down.

More significant even than the fact of transhumance being practised again in West Glamorgan was the fact that press articles felt the need to explain not only the history of the practice, but also the benefit the revived practice brought to Dan’s friend’s holding in Gower, which grew pumpkins – by reference to manure. Despite the journalists’ cosmopolitan uncertainty, manure seemed to be a topic that people understood, at least with reference to gardens and veg production. Within a couple of years, there were several local transhumances across Wales, and in each instance the arrival of the flocks and herds on lowland holdings for whom the animals’ manure was a valuable commodity for crops – tree crops and field crops alike – signified the fact that lowland Wales was once again growing fruit and veg at scale. And by sheer accident, it was now doing so with one eye on the fertility cycle. (And yes, the Gower pumpkin tradition is once again flourishing).

Coastal market gardens

Different parts of the country have also followed more divergent paths than had been the case during the late 20^th century, reflecting previous norms of regional specialization. The coastlands and river valleys, benefiting in many cases both from rich soils and mild, sunny climates, came into their own after a century of benign neglect. South Pembrokeshire, blessed in the greatest measure by both these phenomena, has become a centre of vegetable and fruit production alongside arable grains, with several exemplary intensive production sites operating at scale and contributing substantially to the M4 corridor’s nutritional needs. Vines also proliferate around the lower reaches of the Daugleddau estuary, with light, delicate reds from Angle and Dale making a splash through the warm dry summers of the 2030s. Further north, the high sunshine hours and moderate rainfall of the Cardigan Bay coast from St. Davids’ to Aberaeron have given rise to several renowned whites.

But it’s the Vale of Glamorgan, with its ideal combination of mild maritime climate and warm summers undergirded by rich soils, which has become the market garden for both Cardiff and a good part of the valleys. The industrial greenhouses along the coast between Llantwit and Barry still cause controversy, but in a sign of high and growing levels of horticultural literacy, some protests take the form of vigorous counter-proposals to use fruit-walls instead, with a demonstration site at Llanblethian by the aptly-named ‘Cowbridge Residents Against Polytunnels’. The residents of the lower Clwyd valley on the north coast (in a triangle roughly formed by Abergele, Prestatyn and Denbigh) have taken a more pragmatic approach; with much of the low-lying land around Rhyl flooded several times since the storms of the mid-2020s, there is little opposition to the polytunnels of tomatoes, salads and warm-season veg exported mostly to the Merseyside and Lancashire conurbations and providing dependable part-time employment.

These gardens are not only reviving the Welsh asparagus tradition, but also pushing the boundaries of what can be commercially grown here. Alongside brassicas, leeks and root crops, courgettes amongst other vegetables are now being grown on a field scale, and there are experimental attempts by community gardens in inner city Newport and Cardiff to produce decent crops of sweet potato under cover. The public health benefits of this boom in vegetable production, which has accompanied the steady growth of low-meat and vegan diets over the past thirty years, was recognized in the mid-20s by the NHS, and received significant structural investment of public money in the closing years of the decade leading to a growing group of professional and part-time growers receiving stable if modest incomes for their skilled work.

Inland variety

Inland, less has perhaps changed visually in the landscape than in coastal areas, but this belies the significant increases in land productivity both on biodiversity counts and food production. Sheep and cattle remain the dominant theme of much farming and continue to dominate the landscape visually, despite numbers of the former having fallen significantly. Further falls seems unlikely, however; the renewed transhumance practices coupled with the uneasy truce that finally developed in the rewilding debates have led to a situation where stocking numbers in the hills are noticeably lower than in the 2010s even while upland farms continue in many cases in the age-old tradition of sheep farming. The near-absence of sheep from a good number of upland holdings in the winter and early spring, in part due to the transhumance migrations, gives trees and shrubs the chance to slowly gain a foothold in areas formerly castigated as ‘sheep-wrecked’. The resurgence of many unexpected species of both animals and plants in these parts have contributed to a sense on both sides that an equilibrium has been reached,

On many hill farms below 200-300 metres (west/ east) where the benefits of transhumance are marginal, there has been a significant resurgence in the growing of fodder crops for livestock and on some farms this has been accompanied by forays into grain-growing. A significant change had occurred in Wales’ grain economy when in 2027 rye was again growing a mile from an old ‘Ty Rhyg’ in the Preseli hills, was ground in a mill in St Dogmael’s and used in several local bakeries. Old landraces of oats and wheat were also brought into production again, with a dedicated following working to create the infrastructure needed to process the grains at scale.

Tree crops – for timber and wood production, but also increasingly for fruit and even nut production – were becoming more widespread in inland areas as well. Carbon farming grants have been instrumental in this, with a much broader base of expertise in agroforestry than had formerly existed. The upper Tywi valley between Llandeilo and Llandovery, sheltered from wind storms by the hills of Carmarthenshire and benefiting from more ample rainfall than areas further east, has developed into a centre of cider production, with several cider makers regularly winning European awards.

Perhaps the most salient changes are in the demographic profile of farming and in the range of crops now grown in the country. The rooted Welsh farming family is still an essential part of the rural scene. But alongside these, a much greater proportion of the rural workforce, and the entire urban food sector, is comprised of newer entrants to farming. The average age of farmers has declined steadily over the past decade, and recent studies have shown that public perceptions of a ‘Welsh farmer’ now include young women entrants to the profession or people of colour almost as readily as older men. In terms of the range of crops grown, what are considered experimental crops is a good measure for this change: whereas in the 2010s sea salt, real bread or agroforestry were seen as innovative ventures for land-based enterprises, by the 2040s the newcomers on the scene were tea (with several plantations in wet, mild areas like western Carmarthenshire) and rice (on the Wentlooge levels, easily one of the warmest summer areas in Wales).

An analysis of the factors behind these changes, the seeds for most of which were sown between cc.2015 and 2030, is beyond the scope of this work and has been covered elsewhere. But in short, a groundswell of what has been called ‘foodie activism’ was given a significant boost by the efforts of several prominent public figures, including politicians, to create public buy-in to local procurement policies and a grown-in-Wales approach across government. A significant informal alliance of interested third sector bodies created a sustained publicity campaign centred on farmers and growers which chimed a chord with the public, both Welsh and English-speaking. The conditions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-22 undoubtedly contributed to the latent desire for greater food security amongst the general population, and an awareness of the fragility of the systems under the neoliberal consensus that had dominated. This author would also like to highlight the important role played in changing attitudes to food by ethnic minority communities across Wales, who like previous generations of Italian immigrants, brought new flavours and dishes into the mix of Welsh cuisine and undoubtedly contributed to the re-emergence of a confident food culture in the country.

Government also had a part to play. The policy environment that resulted from the 2029 election and further developed over the 2029-2039 government terms has been characterised as one based on universal access to affordable, healthy food, with a communitarian emphasis on relationship between producers and consumers. As a result, despite some of the innovations and resurrections described above, Wales can be said to have punched below its weight in international perceptions of good food, with alcohol and lamb continuing to be the products which buck this trend. A social-democratic approach to land use seems on the evidence of Wales and some other northern European nations to militate against the production of high-end products in the main. It is instructive in this regard to consider the direction taken by Wales with that taken by some neighbouring societies; the ‘bubbly barons’ of south-eastern England surrounded by urban food deprivation in many towns nearby being a case in point.

The extract ended here; it may be however that readers can provide further detail on how this sea-change came about?